Bene Elohim

Sons of God (Heb: bənê hāʼĕlōhîm, בני האלהים) is a phrase used in the Hebrew Bible and apocrypha. The phrase is also used in Kaballah where Bene elohim are part of different Jewish angelic hierarchies.

In the Hebrew Bible, the phrase "sons of the Elohim" occurs in:

Closely related phrases include:

Arguably, all of these biblical texts refer to angels or heavenly beings.

When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, "My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years." The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

The first mention of "sons of God" in the Hebrew Bible occurs at Genesis 6:1-4. In terms of literary-historical origin, this phrase is typically associated with the Jahwist tradition.

This passage has had two interpretations in Judaism.

Rabbinic Judaism traditionally adheres to the first interpretation, with some exceptions, and modern Jewish translations may translate bnei elohim as "sons of rulers" rather than "sons of God". Regardless, the second interpretation (sons of angels or other divine beings) is nonexistent in modern Judaism. This is reflected by the rejection of Enoch and other Apocrypha supporting the second interpretation from the Hebrew Bible Canon.

Joseph Hong believes that Genesis 6:1-4 has gone through drastic abridgment by either the original writer or later editors.Nahum M. Sarna believes that the text defies certain interpretation, based on difficulties with the text's themes, extreme terseness, vocabulary, and syntax. Sarna postulates that such a passage cannot be other than a fragment, or bare outline, from a well-known fuller story.

Claus Westermann claims that the text of Genesis 6 is based on an Ugaritic . In Ugaritic, a cognate phrase is bn 'il. This may occur in the Ugaritic Baal Cycle.

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